Why Mukono hospital has failed to hire specialist staff

The lack of enough infrastructure at Mukono General Hospital in Mukono Municipality has slowed down efforts by management to recruit critical specialist staff, the leaders have said.

The facility was elevated from a health centre IV to a general hospital in 2020.

But Dr Geoffrey Kasirye, the hospital medical superintendent, said although the elevation of the facility to hospital status had to come with recruitment of specialist staff, this is not yet done because they lack the necessary infrastructure.

“As a hospital, we need to have specialists who need office space and wards where to admit the patients, which are not available,” Dr Kasirye said in an interview on Tuesday.

“A specialist can’t operate on the veranda. So, what we have done is that we have prioritised some areas such as surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, where we have recruited some specialists,” he explained.

Dr Kasirye added that although the government recently completed construction of a storeyed building at the facility, it is not enough to accommodate the specialists.

“This has definitely impacted negatively on the service delivery because some patients need to be attended to by specialists, so we refer them to Mulago National Referral Hospital even when such cases could have been attended to here,” he said.

He said they lack specialists in the areas of paediatrics, general medicine and family medicine, among others.

Dr Kasirye revealed that due to the big number of patients, they often run out of space.

He also said that the facility is facing other challenges such as lack of fuel, high electricity bills and maintenance costs due to limited funding from the government.

“In the current financial year, we received Shs426m, but this has been slashed to Shs323m in this coming financial year. This money is very little to run such a big and busy facility,” Dr Kasirye noted.

He noted that the rise in fuel prices has left them unable to fully utilise the hospital’s ambulance.

“Sometimes we don’t have fuel for the ambulance and we ask the patients to fuel it because we have nothing to do,” the hospital superintendent said.

However, Dr Kasirye said they are planning to start a private wing at the facility as a way of raising some funds to supplement what they receive from the central government.

He, however, said this is awaiting ratification by the Mukono District Council.

Cost sharing

“The hospital board passed a resolution where patients have to pay Shs10, 000 for the scan services, which money is banked and budgeted for. From this source, we raise about Shs4m every month, which also helps us to run the facility,” he said.

Dr Kasirye also said they received Shs220m from the central government, which is being used to construct a new pharmacy building.

“Upon completion, we shall have to recruit a pharmacist,” Dr Kasirye said.

Dr Diana Atwine, the permanent secretary at Ministry Health, said they have a plan of constructing more buildings at Mukono General Hospital and are currently looking  for funds.

“We shall construct more buildings for them and they know it,” Dr Atwine said, without elaborating when this would be done.

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